Power Electronics

In the course of prototype development of electromechanical machines, CEM is often required to design and assemble a wide variety of power electronic devices. The type of device could be as small as a circuit board, or as large as the 2MW solid state ARCP soft switching converter originally designed to support testing of flywheel energy storage for a high speed train application, but now resides as a part of the CEM Microgrid facility. CEM leverages a large low lab space for small to medium size power electronics assembly. The equipment available in this space is extensive, including high precision microscopes, soldering irons, a reflow oven, instrumentation for device testing, and a fume hood to insure environmental safety.

CEM’s High Bay facility accommodates larger power electronics assembly and testing. In addition, it houses two dedicated EMI/RFI shielded control rooms to isolate instrumentation and controls during high energy testing. Fast transient data can be collected using digital storage oscilloscopes and custom designed data acquisition systems are available to monitor and analyze the performance of rotating electrical machines, including rotor vibration and housing accelerations in both time and frequency domains.